Monday, June 5, 2017

Twin Peaks: The Return 3x03 Recap: "Part 3: Call For Help" (Intercourse Between Two Worlds) [Contributor: Erin Allen]

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"Part 3: Call For Help"
Original Airdate: May 28, 2017

So much happens in this episode. I am overwhelmed. Most of it seems like really weird experimental cinema, but if you examine what Lynch shows us you find that it is actually somewhat cohesive and linear storytelling. I’m not saying I understand all of it (I don’t think anyone can claim to), but I was able to follow a narrative amidst the trippiness. And I love that the clues are cloaked in this avant-garde style of filmmaking which requires you to be analytical while you are practically hypnotized by the imagery.

The episode begins in this fashion. Cooper is still falling through space after being pulled out the glass box. He falls onto a narrow concrete balcony that overlooks a body of water, blanketed in fog. I like that Lynch gives Cooper the time to look around. He goes into the building through a window.

There is a woman with no eyes sitting in front of a fireplace. She senses his presence. The film intermittently gets stuck in loops, causing them to move and communicate in a staccato manner. She tries to talk to him, but nothing but voltaic gasps come out. Someone or something starts banging on the metal door, and the woman with no eyes motions for Cooper to be quiet. A light goes on behind them, illuminating a panel on the wall with the number 15 on it. Cooper keeps looking at it. Did Laura whisper something about this to him before she got pulled away? Before she whispered she told him, “You can go out now.”

There is a force field around it, though. Cooper gets zapped as he gets close to it. The woman with no eyes — who I am starting to think might be Judy, but is listed in the credits as Naido — stops him, making the throat slitting motion as a warning. She then leads him out the back.

They go up a ladder to the top of this concrete box floating in space with a tall metal dome on the top of it. Naido pulls a lever, gets electrocuted, and is flung into outer space. Cooper looks down over the ledge, and the giant translucent head of Major Briggs floats into frame. He says, “Blue Rose,” and floats out of frame. Oh my God. Blue Rose cases, under the supervision of Deputy Director Gordon Cole, all seem to involve supernatural elements. Major Briggs investigated The White Lodge under the US Air Force’s classified Project Blue Book on the original run.

Cooper goes back inside to find another woman sitting by the fireplace. This woman has eyes. In fact, she has Ronette Pulaski’s large doe eyes. It is the actress that played Ronette, but she is credited as American Girl because that’s not confusing in any way. The panel on the wall has the number 3 on it now. There is a blue rose in a vase on the table. American Girl checks her watch, and we see it turn 2:53. In Part 2, The Arm said “253. Time and time again.”

BOB/Cooper is still driving on the empty highway. He starts to get disoriented. There are close-ups on the car’s cigarette lighter and the clock which reads 2:53, too. American Girl tells Cooper in a more pronounced backwards language, “When you get there, you will already be there.” Cooper gets closer to the panel and gets shocked by the force field. The banging on the door begins again, and American Girl warns him, “You’d better hurry, my mother’s coming.” Cooper keeps going into the smoky, electrical force field and gets sucked INTO the slots in the panel.

Back on the road, BOB/Cooper is driving erratically, and getting more and more affected. There are more close-ups on the lighter outlet, and it seems like Cooper is going to come out of it or something. He crashes the car, and then looks like he’s about to get sick, but he tries to hold it in. The red curtains of The Black Lodge appear in front of him.

We cut to a new housing development called Rancho Rosa. Inside one of the homes is another Cooper doppelganger. Like we need more to keep track of. This one is named Dougie. He’s heavier than real Cooper and evil Cooper, and has a different (awful) haircut. He tells the woman he’s with that his left arm is tingly, and he is unable to move it. MIKE is missing his left arm. The Arm warned them of its own doppelganger. Is Dougie The Arm’s doppelganger? Dougie is also wearing the jade owl cave ring from Fire Walk With Me. Curiouser and curiouser.

Dougie becomes doubled over in pain and crawls out to the living room where he vomits what looks like creamed corn with blood and black stuff. I’m getting sick to my stomach just writing about it. It’s really disgusting. There is a close-up on the outlet on the wall. Is Cooper going to come through that? The suspense is killing me! There is a loud noise, and Dougie vanishes. BOB/Cooper is still covering his mouth, trying not to get sick. Dougie appears in the red curtains. BOB/Cooper then vomits the same stuff, and there is so much of it. It’s probably the grossest vomiting I’ve seen on screen. (Yes, even compared to The Exorcist.) Is this 25 years worth of garmonbozia coming out of them? This is wild.

Dougie is now in The Black Lodge with MIKE. He asks, “What’s happening?” I would like to know, as well. MIKE tells him that someone manufactured him for a purpose that now might be fulfilled. This leads me to thinks that BOB/Cooper somehow created Dougie to trick Cooper. He told Darya that he had a plan so he wouldn’t have to go back. Maybe the first panel Cooper saw in the electrical room that was labeled 15 was a portal to BOB/Cooper, but he went through the one labeled 3, which we see soon will lead him through the outlets in the house Dougie was in.

Dougie’s left arm shrinks, and then his head disappears in a geyser of black smoke. A gold orb floats out his neck hole, and his body fizzles away. Then there’s a floating lump of coal, and what am I even typing right now? It sounds like nonsense, huh? It looks pretty rad, though, and I love being messed with by David Lynch. It’s an exciting ride. Anyways, MIKE covers his eyes before the lump of coal turns into a burnt marshmallow. Is this the wad of gum head from the arm tree? Well, it vomits up the gold orb, and then flashes away leaving behind a gold ball bearing on the chair. Mike picks up the owl cave ring and the gold bead. He puts the ring on the table and leaves the room, looking very agitated.

Back in Rancho Rosa, a light flashes behind one of the electrical outlets, and smoky rods come out them. It’s Cooper! I noticed that the pin he had on his lapel while in The Black Lodge is gone, as are his shoes. The woman Dougie was with when we were introduced to him comes out and is surprised by the suit he’s in and his different haircut, but she still thinks he is Dougie. Cooper is catatonic, and the woman, Jade, is very patient with him. She searches his pockets for Dougie’s car keys and finds Cooper’s hotel key from The Great Northern, room 315. 3 and 15. Coincidence? Heck if I know.

They leave in Jade’s car. There are two goons after Dougie. It is unclear if they are connected with BOB/Cooper or just some trouble this Dougie fella is mixed up in. Cooper avoids getting shot by one of the goons when he bends down to retrieve his fallen keychain. The other goon puts an explosive device on Dougie’s car.

A kid watches from the house across the street. His drugged out mom yells, “1-1-9!” over and over. 9-1-1 backwards? She takes a pill and calms down.

Cops pull up to the scene of BOB/Cooper’s car crash. One of them gets sick when he gets close to BOB/Cooper. “There is something bad in this vehicle.”

Next, we find ourselves back in Twin Peaks for the first time on this episode. Hawk has an exasperating meeting with Andy and Lucy as they look for what might be missing in the files pertaining to Cooper and Laura Palmer. The box of chocolate bunnies that Cooper holds up and says into his tape recorder, “Diane, I’m holding in my hand a small box of chocolate bunnies,” on the pilot episode, is among the evidence. It seemed like such a throwaway line at the time, but is it significant? “Is it about the bunny?”

Then we get a lengthy scene of Dr. Jacoby spray painting five shovels gold.

Jade drops Cooper off at the Silver Mustang Casino. She gives him $5 and has to nudge him to get out of the car. Poor Coop has some major PTSD. We all saw how strange and nightmarish The Black Lodge can be, and Cooper has been living there for 25 years! I just want to give him a damn fine cup of coffee, and a hug, and tell him everything is going to be okay. He’s finally back in the real world, but he doesn’t magically revert to that lighthearted, jovial gentleman that we met in Twin Peaks. Jade tells him to “call for help,” and he repeats her. He shuffles up to the revolving door and it nudges him into the casino.

Inside, a security guard directs Cooper to the cashier, so he can exchange his $5 for coins. With his bucket of coins Cooper wanders around the slot machine floor. What a place to be thrust into after being in an alternative reality for two-plus decades. Cooper watches a man ritually rub a quarter before dropping it in the slot. He wins and hollers, “Helloo-oo-oo!” Cooper, who has been repeating words that are said to him, goes to a slot machine that has a triangular Black Lodge flame thing hovering above it. He plays a quarter doing exactly what the man had done. “Helloo-oo-oo!” He hits a jackpot! He doesn’t take any of his winnings because he sees more of those Black Lodge triangles above other slot machines. He follows them around and wins at each one of them. This little old lady gets jealous, and flips him off. He points at a slot machine next to her. When she sees his streak continues, she plays the slot he pointed at and wins, as well. It’s an unexpected and heartwarming moment among so much weirdness.

At FBI Headquarters in Philadelphia we are reintroduced to Deputy Director Gordon Cole (David Lynch) and Agent Albert Rosenfeld, played by the late Miguel Ferrer. They finish up a meeting, and have Agent Tamara Preston stay after to brief them on the bodies of Sam and Tracey found in New York. She tells them that the camera that recorded the glass box captured only a couple of blurred images and one from the night of the murders. It looks like it could be from when Cooper was floating in the box. It also looks like it could be the being that we saw attack the couple. Upon even further speculation, one can theorize that Cooper and the being are one and the same.

As Tammy is telling them that they found no prints or DNA at the scene, a call comes in saying that Cooper is on the phone. The way Gordon says “Albert!” after hearing this made my heart seize up. They all go into Gordon’s office. The set design in here took my breath away. There is a large photo of Franz Kafka on one wall and a nuclear mushroom cloud picture on another. Gordon takes the call on an old-style red phone. When he gets off the phone, he tells Albert and Tammy that they are “headed for the black hills of South Dakota.”

The episode ends back at The Roadhouse as The Cactus Blossoms play on the stage. The credits roll.

This very well might become one of my favorite episodes of the series. There is so much Lynchian weirdness with that Mark Frost logic underscoring everything. It’s such a beautiful combination of each of their unique minds.

Stray Observations:
  • I love that Major Briggs is deep into the military’s secret supernatural operations, and that he is played by actor Don S. Davis, who also was on The X-Files as Scully’s dad. Where’s this crossover fanfic?
  • In that same vein, Gordon Cole’s Blue Rose cases seem like they are kind of the same as what Mulder and Scully investigate as X-Files agents. 
  • The Rs on the Rancho Rosa sign are circled together. Is this a reference to the Double-R?   
  • Speaking of the Double-R, they now have nifty to-go coffee travelers.
  • Jade and Cooper drive by Sycamore St. and this seems to jog Cooper’s memory like the hotel key did. 
  • There are playing cards on the table the drugged out mom sits at. I don’t know if this means anything. 
  • The “Donut Disturb” sign, though.
  • Josh McDermitt, who plays Eugene on The Walking Dead, has a small role in the casino. What’s weird is that he looks just like his character, Eugene.
  • Gordon and Albert are another two of my favorite characters from the show. I loved this reintroduction. 
  • “We fly at dawn.”

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